WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — Danica Patrick, who has been criticized by Travis Kvapil after two wrecks between the two in recent weeks, called the Wisconsin driver earlier this week to talk about the incidents.

Kvapil was frustrated following their accident last week at Pocono, saying he was done racing Patrick clean. He also used a derogatory term on twitter used by Wisconsin people to describe Illinois drivers — Patrick is from Illinois.

“I’m done just getting run over and wrecked and racing her clean,” Kvapil said. “When you’re in vulnerable situations, you have to guard yourself and take care of your stuff. She is a rookie and you’ve got to learn that, but that’s a couple of weeks in a row for me.”

At New Hampshire last month, another mistake by Patrick also ruined Kvapil’s day.

“I did call him and did talk to him,” Patrick said Friday prior to Cup practice at Watkins Glen International “I felt like it was time to do that. It was a good conversation. Hopefully we don’t have any more issues in the future.

“It’s not good to crash cars. I don’t want to be in that position. I don’t want to be in the position to take anyone with me.”

The accident last week occurred after Patrick lost control of her car following a pit stop for adjustments. She said she wasn’t sure if the adjustment made her car too free or if she had the air taken off the side of her car.

“I don’t want to make more mistakes,” Patrick said. “Coming off of (New Hampshire) for sure into our break, I said to myself I was going to run my own races and I wasn’t going to let anything get to me and it just is what it is.

“I have better days when I don’t get bothered by anything (on the track). That is how I went into Pocono. … I really felt very calm in that race.”

Patrick’s team will try to put last weekend behind it and focus on this week’s race at Watkins Glen, which could be a challenge as team owner Tony Stewart suffered a broken leg Monday in a sprint-car racing accident.

Patrick visited Stewart on Wednesday night at the North Carolina hospital where he had been transferred.

“He’s in typical Tony spirits,” Patrick said. “He’s hassling the nurse and everything you could imagine Tony is. He’s in pretty good spirits. It’s one of those things. It happens.”

Stewart faces what is expected to be a recovery that will take several weeks.

“He’s one of the masters of this track — he’s won here a lot so before we left I asked him for all his speed secrets,” Patrick said with a laugh.

“He has a good spirit about him. Everybody that works around him, or doesn’t to be honest, loves Tony. He’ll just be missed from a presence and morale standpoint. I said I’ll do my best to keep everybody on the up-and-up and end the season well.”

Patrick scoffed at the idea that Stewart should feel any remorse for letting down his team by getting injured in a race outside of his Cup schedule.

“It’s not a mystery — he loves racing sprint cars,” Patrick said. “He has a team. He races them all the time. When we were there saying hello, you have a lot of people on both sides of the fence about the safety of sprint-car racing, I said, ‘Bleep happens.’

“It just does. Nobody at the team is mad or upset. We feel bad for him. We all want him around.”